Portrait de Madame Puybaraud

Paul Émile Chabas (March 7, 1869 – May 10, 1937) was a French painter and illustrator and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Chabas was born in Nantes, and had his artistic training under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1890. Chabas won the Prix National at the 1899 Paris Salon with his Joyeux Ébats. He was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and in 1912 received the Médaille d’honneur. His preferred subject was a nude young woman in a natural setting. He was considered to be one of Europe's greatest painters of nudes.

His most famous painting, Matinée de Septembre (September Morn) (1912), became a "succès de scandale" in the United States in May, 1913, when Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, protested against the painting as supposedly immoral. Chabas was offended by the controversy over the painting. For a time he sought anonymity in the South of France. There was much publicity, and reproductions of the painting sold well for years afterwards. September Morn has often been cited as an example of kitsch.